That Americans, after all these years of tearing their hair out and trying everything in the wide world else, still can't iron out their racial predicaments tells us numerous things we need to understand.
Here's one: that the federal courts (not for want of gratuitous application to the job) seem no nearer now than 30 years ago to resolving these tricky and complex questions.
Or haven't we noted the U.S. Supreme Court's role in ginning up these discussions this summer? Or the divisions a divided court stirred up in limiting race as a factor in student placement?
The court last week commanded Seattle and metropolitan Louisville to stop promoting racial "diversity" in the classroom by assigning students on the basis of race. Five justices said programs directed at racial balance were unconstitutional; four justices said (in essence) baloney, all Seattle and Louisville have sought to do is promote integration and stand in the way of "retrogression."
The learned justices made known how agitated they were with each other. "This is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret," said Justice Stephen Breyer. Replied Justice Clarence Thomas: "Justice Breyer's good intentions, which I do not doubt, have the shelf life of Justice Breyer's tenure."
From outside the marble temple where our judicial demi-gods tax their brains and test their tempers arises a feeble squeak of a question: Do we really need to go on this way? Do the courts -- in other words -- have to dot every social "i," cross every cultural "t," from school enrollment to abortion policy to the propriety of Nativity scenes?
Of course they don't. They just do it. That's the galling, not to mention the self-defeating, part. Modern federal judges tend to believe they sit at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. No wonder they rarely get it right.
Clarification: The times they get it right tend to be the times they modestly acknowledge, by howsoever slim a margin, their own unsuitability as universal, all-purpose arbiters, instructing the elected branches of government what to do.
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